What’s On has details of the technology being used at Dubai Mall car park, the world’s largest, to help shoppers find their car.

You’re staggering around a noisy car park after a particularly hectic mall trawl. You’re carrying six shopping bags, the handles of which are slicing through the flesh of your hands. You’re sweating. Cars are beeping at you and each other. You suddenly panic about whether you can afford what you’ve just bought. And you have no idea where you’ve parked. Wait, that pillar looks familiar; I remember that red Porsche! You get closer, hang on, that’s a Ferrari, not a Porsche. Your brain goes blank. You trudge to the taxi rank and believe you’ll never see your car again.

Sound familiar?

Well, worry no more, because The Dubai Mall has introduced a piece of technological wizardry to help drivers who can’t remember where they’ve parked.

Drivers simply visit the touch screen in the car park and type in their licence plate number. A computer then searches for your plate using a network of scanners situated throughout the car park. Up flashes a picture of your car on screen with an exact location of the level and aisle, plus a map of how to get there. This clever tool is currently on trial in The Dubai Mall, but it’s unconfirmed whether it will become a permanent fixture.

The Dubai Mall, the largest shopping centre in the world, has three car parks, with a capacity of 14,000 vehicles. Two of the car parks have more than 10 levels. When it opened in 2008, customers complained that the car parks were confusing, which led to many frustrated shoppers wandering the aisles trying to locate their vehicle.

If these touch screens are implemented, perhaps you’ll never again have to hold your car key aloft, desperately pushing the button in the hope of hearing the bleep of your ride home.